Vlambeer are thankful their first contact with inXile ”was by a normal employee, and not a lawyer.” They got a ”short, amicable” email that led to a Skype chat on the name.
After their little chat, indie Vlambeer decided it was ”the right thing for us to change the name.” Wasteland Kings and Wasteland 2 both occupy a post-apocalyptic world.
”They explained that inXile CEO Brian Fargo and some of the team were worried about possible brand confusion and argued that Wasteland Kings could be misinterpreted as a title in the ‘Wasteland’ franchise,” Vlambeer wrote.
”We’ve been through a lot of trouble with people riding on things of ours, and we understand that American trademark law is pretty strict in that not defending a trademark weakens it. We realise that both games are set in a similar setting, that the names are similar and that inXile obviously felt the need to reach out.”
”Although we aren’t sure Wasteland Kings and Wasteland are confusing enough for this to be an issue, both us and inXile really don’t want to spend development time on arguing over trivialities.”
Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail is impressed they were treated with dignity and respect over the matter.
”Most of all, we appreciate that the first contact between us was by a normal employee, and not a lawyer. There was no extravagant Cease & Desist-letter, nor a threatening letter in an envelope labelled ‘URGENT’. The e-mail we received was short, amicable and to-the-point. It was followed up by a quick conversation on Skype, in which we established that it would be the right thing for us to change the name,” he explained.
”This is the way business should work nowadays: between people, not companies, not lawyers, not departments. There’s so much paperwork between one and another that it’s easy for people to forget that they’re dealing with people instead of numbers and dossiers. Things can be friendly, rather than formal for the sake of formality.”
Nuclear Throne is in development for PC, PS4 and PS Vita. It’s a roguelike action game where players lead a band of mutants around through randomly generated worlds teeming with monsters.
